The work and effort of many years in the creation and growth of the national museum of photography “Marubi” was finalized on Thursday evening in a gala event where the agreement was signed with the oldest photographic archive in the world, the “Alinari” Archive.

Director of this museum, Luçjan Bedeni, has appreciated this historical moment, which as he said it will not stop here. The goal behind it is to create a school of photography.

“With Alinari, it is a very important point. It is historical. This cooperation has another goal. A photography school which is a very ambitious project of Marubi. It will not be a simple photography school, our attention will be on restorations, on conservation, the way of digitization and the handling of archives” – said Lucian Bedeni, Director of the National Museum.

The finalization of this collaboration with the Italian archive will be two exhibitions of well-known names of world art, soon at the “Marubi” museum.

“We are very happy that our archive comes into contact with another photographic archive that was born by an Italian photographer like Marubi and we show to the world through photography, the past. The extraordinary collection and the quality of preservation of these materials make the “Marubi” museum special. We will work to teach young people to get to know the processes of photo restoration, conservation, as we have an excellent school in Florence” said Giorgio Van Straten, president of Alinari.

“All this is an interesting story, as it starts from a NO. When I learned that I will be the director of the Italian Institute of Culture, also because of the acquaintances, I wanted to bring an exhibition of Alinar to Albania. I got a NO at first, but today we got there and the reasons why are many. We have signed a long-term agreement for the coming years between Marubi and Alinar,” said Alessandro Ruggera, Director of the Italian Institute of Culture.

The history of the Alinari photographic collection began in Florence in 1852 when Leopoldo Alinari set up his first photographic laboratory in Florence. Together with his brothers Giuseppe and Romualdo, they founded the firm “Alinari Brothers”. Today this archive counts over 5 million artefacts from the collections of the world’s most important artists.